The main difference between a French door and a Patio door is that the doors open outwards rather than sliding.
The doors also might have glazing bars or diving rails. If they do, this would lend themselves to having horizontal diving rails in the shutter design.
A typical French door would consist of two doors opening outwards. Depending on the door use, you could have two large shutters or four bi-folding shutters so they take up less room when open.
French doors can have halfway horizontal dividing rails, so it’s nice to match this with your shutter design and incorporate a rail to match.
French doors normally have large handles, so if you have a UPVC door, we fit wooden battens around the recess first (the same depth as the handle), then our standard frame can be screwed onto the battens ensuring the louvres do not hit the handles. The battens also allow us to fit the shutters with a neat shadow gap rather than filler and ensures the frame is strong enough to handle bi-folding shutters.
If your door is wooden, the shutter can be screwed directly to the door.
We don’t recommend having more than two shutters hinged together (without a top track) because the shutters would drop.
With small French doors, you can choose a 3-sided frame so there is no trip hazard, this means no bottom shutter frame.
If you have two shutters with a left right design, they would be guaranteed, but if you have four bi-folding shutters without a bottom frame, it would void the guarantee.
If you have skirting board, it can either be removed to allow for the shutter frame to run down to the floor, or the frame can be cut around the skirting.
If the frame is cut, we would normally allow a shadow gap around the skirting board to match.
